World will warm faster than predicted in next five years - Study

by Kevin Fed | July 28, 2009 at 04:24 am

353 views | 98 Recommendations | 13 comments

Stories on the scourge of global warming continue to pour in. The fact is no longer a secret that the earth is warmer than it used to be when compared to the last decade. Irregularity in the weather cycles, irregular and startling temperature rises and drops have made this earth a different place.

If this was not enough, a new study has revealed that in the next five years the world will warm faster than predicted. This would be mostly due to the amount of CO2 increasing in the atmosphere. I am no SME for climate change but this could be the most obvious reason.

Some warm times ahead of us..

The world faces record-breaking temperatures as the sun's activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted for the next five years, according to a study.

The hottest year on record was 1998, and the relatively cool years since have led to some global warming sceptics claiming that temperatures have levelled off or started to decline. But new research firmly rejects that argument.

The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

As solar activity picks up again in the coming years, the research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Lean and Rind's research also sheds light on the extreme average temperature in 1998. The paper confirms that the temperature spike that year was caused primarily by a very strong El Niño episode. A future episode could be expected to create a spike of equivalent magnitude on top of an even higher baseline, thus shattering the 1998 record.

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albertacowpoke

at 06:00 on July 28th, 2009

"Global warming may or may not be the great environmental crisis of the next century, but -- regardless of whether it is or isn't -- we won't do much about it. We will (I am sure) argue ferociously over it and may even, as a nation, make some fairly solemn-sounding commitments to avoid it. But the more dramatic and meaningful these commitments seem, the less likely they are to be observed. Little will be done. . . . Global warming promises to become a gushing source of national hypocrisy.''

Source: washingtonpost.com

albertacowpoke

at 06:02 on July 28th, 2009

From 2003 to 2050, the world's population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that's too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world's poor to their present poverty -- and freeze everyone else's living standards -- we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

skeptique (not verified)

at 08:08 on July 28th, 2009

Not sure just how much of this is fear mongering, but there's no way that all the crap we're putting into the air isn't having some kind of negative effect

Barbara McPherson

at 09:30 on July 28th, 2009

ok, now I'm depressed.

a211423

at 09:54 on July 28th, 2009

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31590&Cr=Climate

http://waterfortheages.org/2008/02/18/the-dust-begins-to-rise-inner-mongolia-desertification-report-by-circle-of-blue/

Mongolia and other steppe countries are experiencing desertification. The water table drops and ground water becomes salty resulting in the disappearance of grasslands and the creation of dust storms of eroded soil. This happened in the U.S. in Oaklahoma and Texas when topsoil was eroded and blown away by winds during a persistent drought in 1930's. Families were forced to either migrate to other states or stay and suffer the devastating economic and health consequences of the dust.

Landlocked and deveoping countries like Mongolia do not contribute to global warming and the increase in CO2, but they are suffering the effects through desertification of their land.

Learning about the effects of global warming, in my opinion, is not fear mongering, and increased our knowledge of how we in advanced countries impact the global environment.

Hugh Askew (not verified)

at 10:10 on July 28th, 2009

My suggestion? All those worried about "glo-bull warming" just leave.

As in, depart, get thee hence, etc. Where you go is up to you. Neptune (it's much cooler there) would be my choice.

Leave more room for the rest of us, give us a break from your inane nattering about your neurosis, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Forty years ago, the exact same types were telling us we were all going to be crushed under the glaciers in a new ice age. Now, the bubbleheads are certain - certain, i say - that we are going to roast, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah .

Of course, there was going to be massive global starvation due to over population.....oh wait, all of us are still going to starve at any moment....whilst the gummit gives massive subsidies to those who don't grow crops....because the is no place to store the surpluses.

Kind of like doing acid at wacky-world, only without the feel good buzz..................

at 12:56 on July 28th, 2009

You wouldn't know it, with the dismal weather in the UK, feels more like global cooling, most of the time.

Iceman87 (not verified)

at 16:07 on July 28th, 2009

The globe has been warming since the "Ice-age."

Kind of slowly though, nothing really to get excited about.

But it takes all kinds and now they are heard more often.

When I was a kid the "weekly Reader" said there was a "Population Explosion" that would destroy mankind.

Let's see, that was forty-seven years ago and mankind and the world are still here.

But new "scares" are just a TV away. ;-)

bettermakings (not verified)

at 18:46 on July 28th, 2009

hahahahahaha!!!! you fell for the hoax!!!

#1: why don't you put a graph of the changing temperatures of the earth over the past 1000 years, or even better 100,000 years?!?!?!

#2: why don't you have a pie-graph showing where most of the CO2 on earth comes from?!?!

#3: how can anyone predict 5 years from now when they're wrong about 5 days from now, unless you are claiming to be a prophet?!?!

by the way, i am a scientist who has studied this professionally. the only scientists who "believe" in global warming are getting paid to believe it.

... or you can go ahead and believe whatever the "experts" tell you, instead of doing your own research. (go to a library, not the internet)

Kevin Fed

at 21:01 on July 28th, 2009

Thanks all for a great response. I am happy that this story meant something to some people.

158

at 16:08 on July 29th, 2009

It is a good story on an important topic which will affect all of us.,

Colonel Boyle

at 04:48 on August 26th, 2009

It's a nice article and a good discussion, but the premise is seriously flawed.

5 years ago, I was firmly in the camp of belief, boring my friends down the pub about why we were all going to die when the Earth got hot. And then I started researching it, marshalling a factual basis for my belief so I could be even more of an auto-didactic bore on the topic.

Wow. Did my eyes ever get opened.

I think before anyone in the media is allowed to publish another scare story about global warming or whatever, they should be forced to pass a test as to what the significance of a few things are. Namely:

The Dalton and Maunder Minima, and the importance of minima in general
The Milankovitch Cycle
www.surfacestations.org
The difference between HadCRUT and Gistemp and the significance of that difference
The use of buckets to measure ocean temperatures vs. intakes in the hull and why that is important to post 1945 readings
The reliability or otherwise of proxies to recreate past temperatures
CO2 concentrations vs. average global temperatures
The role of prevailing winds in arctic sea ice
etc
etc
etc

The truth is, no-one really wants to bother reading behind the headlines which IPCC "summaries" so expertly feed to a complicit press. Climate is perhaps the most complicated natural system we know of, and our understanding of it is at such a primitive stage that continuing to follow the development arc we're on is madness for generations of people who will be stricken by poverty as a result.